HIDDEN AGENDAS:
WHAT IS REALLY
BEHIND ATTACKS ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
About the Brennan Center for Justice
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law unites thinkers and
advocates in pursuit of a vision of inclusive and effective democracy. Our
mission is to develop and implement an innovative, nonpartisan agenda
of scholarship, public education, and legal action that promotes equality
and human dignity while safeguarding fundamental freedoms.
Central to the Center’s Poverty Program is its innovative Legal Services
Project — a national, multi-faceted effort to help ensure effective,
enduring, and unrestricted civil legal assistance for low-income
individuals and communities. The Center actively fights efforts to restrict
legal services programs and vocally rebuts the relentless attacks made by
their opponents.
About The Access to Justice Series
This paper is the seventh in a series issued by the Center illuminating
the accomplishments of legal services programs throughout the country,
and documenting the impact of restrictions recently imposed by Congress
on the federally funded Legal Services Corporation. It is the result of
extensive investigative reporting by award-winning journalist Patrick J.
Kiger in close collaboration with the Brennan Center’s Laura K. Abel,
Elisabeth S. Jacobs, Jobina Jones, Leena Khandwala, Ilana Marmon,
Kimani Paul-Emile, Amanda E. Cooper, and David S. Udell. The following
individuals have been consulted as advisors for this series: Bonnie Allen,
William Beardall, Martha Bergmark, Ann Erickson, Victor Geminiani, Peter
Helwig, Steve Hitov, Carol Honsa, Alan W. Houseman, Esther Lardent,
Linda Perl, Don Saunders, Julie M. Strandlie, Mauricio Vivero, Jonathan A.
Weiss and Ira Zarov.
For more information, or to order any of the Brennan Center’s
publications, contact the Center at:
BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE AT NYU SCHOOL OF LAW
161 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, 12TH FLOOR
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10013
212 998 6730
FAX 212 995 4550
www.brennancenter.org
Acknowledgments
The Access to Justice Series is supported by generous grants from the
Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute.
THE ACCESS
THE ACCESS
TO
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
HIDDEN AGENDAS:
WHAT IS REALLY
BEHIND ATTACKS ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
X1
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
The seventh installment of the Access to Justice Series, Hidden Agendas:
What Is Really Behind the Attacks on Legal Aid Lawyers? shines a bright light
on the organizations and individuals responsible for imposing funding cuts
and restrictions on civil legal aid lawyers, particularly on those in programs
receiving federal funds from the nation’s Legal Services Corporation.
These cuts and restrictions directly harm individuals and families unable to
afford private counsel, but it is not immediately obvious why anyone would
wish these vulnerable people ill. After all, civil legal aid programs have
historically represented people for whom many Americans feel tremendous
empathy: individuals and families being evicted, deported, exploited by
employers, victimized by domestic violence, denied governmental benefits,
cheated through consumer fraud, denied fair wages, and more.
So, who is trying to take away the lawyers and deny the vulnerable poor
their day in court? It is a narrow band of very aggressive advocacy groups
closely allied with agribusiness interests and the Religious Right. Those
with the highest profile include the American Farm Bureau Federation, the
Christian Coalition, the Conservative Caucus, the Family Research Counsel,
and the National Legal and Policy Center.
Why attack legal aid? These groups say that legal aid pursues a left-wing
agenda and helps immoral people, but the attackers’ true agenda is to relax
legal protections for workers and to impose the attackers’ particular vision
of correct morality on the entire society. This article reveals these
motivations, and, more profoundly, illuminates the importance of
preserving access to justice, not only for the most vulnerable members of
society, but for us all.
David S. Udell
Director, Poverty Program
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
X2
Copyright© January 2001 by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
without permission in writing from the publisher, Brennan Center for Justice, 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th Floor, New York, New York 10013.
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
C
N
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
HIDDEN AGENDAS:
WHAT IS REALLY
BEHIND ATTACKS ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
THE FARM BUREAU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
THE NATIONAL LEGAL AND POLICY CENTER 11
THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
1
X3
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
Where do low-income Americans — including
abused women and children in Oregon, elderly victims
of consumer fraud schemes in Tennessee, and farm
workers cheated of their wages in Florida and Maryland
— turn when they have serious legal problems and
cannot afford to hire a lawyer? Each year, more than a
million individuals turn to legal aid lawyers at the over
200 independent non-profits nationwide that receive
federal funding from the Legal Services Corporation
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
lawyers of promoting divorce and homosexuality, helping
drug dealers, and putting farmers out of business. One
critic, Howard Phillips of The Conservative Caucus,
complains to Congress that the lawyers are “imbued with
a neo-Marxist ideology of class warfare and socialist
objective.” Another critic, Kenneth Boehm, whose
National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) pumps out
magazine articles and press handouts called Legal Services
Horror Stories, asks, “Are [legal aid lawyers] really
representing the poor, or are they pursuing their own
political agenda?” Yet another attacker, Family Research
Council (FRC) President and sometime United States
Presidential candidate Gary Bauer, declares, “[LSC is] a
taxpayer-funded deep well for anti-family litigation.”
Harry Bell, a board member of the American Farm
Bureau Federation (Farm Bureau), likewise denounces
LSC as “an unproductive and unnecessary expense for
the federal government.” One particularly vehement
critic, political fund-raiser and activist Paul Weyrich, goes
so far as to describe LSC as “among those government
organizations most harmful to our society.”
Attacks such as these have inflicted major damage:
LSC’s critics mounted a well-financed, highly organized
publicity and lobbying effort, and it worked. In 1995,
the critics convinced Congress to slash LSC’s
appropriation from $400 million to $278 million, as
part of a plan to eliminate the program completely over
a three-year period. Thanks to energetic efforts by legal
aid supporters, the organized bar, and sympathetic
members of Congress, LSC’s life has so far been spared,
but just barely. Today, LSC struggles with an
appropriation of just over $300 million. Even without
adjusting for inflation, that is less than the program
had at its disposal in 1981. When the figure is adjusted
for inflation, it is less than half of the 1981 allocation.
Paul Weyrich (Terry Ashe/TIME/TimePix, reprinted with permission)
(LSC). Although these advocates make a profound
difference in many people’s lives, since the inception of
LSC in 1974 the lawyers have been under nearly
continuous attack from enemies who consider LSC an
outrage and demand that it be shut down.
Critics denounce LSC as a program run dangerously
amok, a haven for ideologically-driven lawyers who use
public funding to further their own aims, rather than to
help low-income people. The critics accuse LSC-funded
2
ON
Today, LSC struggles with an appropriation of just over $300 million. Even
without adjusting for inflation, that is less than the program had at its disposal
in 1981. When the figure is adjusted for inflation, it is less than half of the
1981 allocation.
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
Howard Phillips
Howard Phillips is one of LSC’s most dedicated foes. While he was the director of the Office for Economic
Opportunity under President Nixon, Phillips nearly succeeded in entirely eliminating federal funding for legal
aid. In the following decades, Phillips has drifted away from mainstream conservatism and founded a radical
third party, currently called the Constitution Party, which is based on the belief that “the U.S. Constitution
established a Republic under God, rather than a democracy.”
The following excerpts from Phillips’ September 2000 acceptance speech for the Constitution Party’s Presidential
nomination, which included a call for the abolition of LSC, illuminate the views of this vociferous LSC critic:
[O]n Day One, as President of the United States, I will officially acknowledge the legal personhood of the
unborn child, and appoint — by recess appointment, if necessary — new United States Attorneys who will
make it their top priority to work with state and local officials in prosecuting and closing down every
abortuary within their jurisdictions.
***
[T]he bipartisan Washington political establishment ignores the prohibition on Congress funding any
establishment of religion, looking the other way as Congress doles out scores of billions of dollars annually
to organizations whose religion is abortion, whose religion is sodomy, whose religion is environmentalism,
whose religion is humanism, whose religion is the overthrow of Western Christian civilization.
***
There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution of the United States which authorizes the Congress to
either regulate or restrict your right, and my right, to keep and bear arms, and when we assume office,
all such restrictions will be declared null and void because they are in conflict with the plain text of
the Constitution.
***
We will abolish the Federal Election Commission. We will eliminate all ceilings on individual contributions.
As faithful stewards, it is our duty to immediately withdraw the United States from all institutions which
challenge and undermine the American system of sovereignty and accountability — and that includes the
United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization,
the Asian Development Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development — and, yes, the Federal Reserve.
***
[A]s President, I pledge to you that I will veto all further funds for the Internal Revenue Service. I will
work to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, and I will strive to persuade Congress that there should be no
direct taxation whatsoever by the Federal government on the American people, with revenues instead to be
derived by excises, imposts, duties and apportionment among the states.
***
It is to defend the sovereignty of God that we oppose the surrender of tax dollars and policy control to the
institutions of the New World Order. . . . The Constitution Party of the United States is ready to oppose any
usurpation and to resist all tyranny on the cusp of the 21st Century . . . .
Phillips’ presidential nomination acceptance speech goes on to condemn not only Al Gore and Bill Clinton, but
also prominent Republicans including Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dannis Hastert, and “the
overwhelming majority of the Republican members of the U.S. Senate.”
(Source: <http://www.constitutionparty.com>)
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
3
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
In addition, Congress imposed rules in 1996 that
banned LSC-funded lawyers from using basic tools of
litigation that all other lawyers can use for their clients.
For example, LSC-funded lawyers can no longer file
class-action suits, lobby legislators on behalf of clients,
challenge welfare laws, or collect attorneys’ fees awards
that judges order their clients’ opponents to pay. The
fees award restriction, LSC-funded lawyers say, is one of
the worst hindrances, because the threat of a fees award
is often helpful in deterring wrongdoers from engaging
in harmful acts, and because it also provides negotiating
leverage that can enable clients to obtain settlements in
strong cases without going to trial unnecessarily.
Another harmful restriction prevents LSC-funded
lawyers from even reaching out to offer legal aid to
potential clients. “It’s frustrating,” explains Bob Wilbert,
a lawyer with the Legal Aid Bureau in Maryland, an
LSC-funded program. “There are people we used to be
able to help. But we can’t help [them] now.”
Given that legal aid lawyers help individuals and
families whose needs are often desperate, it takes some
digging to understand why critics would want to attack
the lawyers. In many cases, the outraged and righteous
rhetoric of the attackers obscures an agenda that many
Americans would find troubling or even deeply
unsettling. The Farm Bureau attacks LSC out of
financial self interest, because it believes that LSC
lawyers interfere with profits that come at the expense
of low-income Americans. The NLPC directly attacks
the clients themselves, particularly immigrants, welfare
recipients, and gay men. The Religious Right attacks
LSC as part of a world view that it seeks to impose not
only on low-income people, but on everyone.
ON
Who are the attackers?
American Farm Bureau Federation: The “Farm
Bureau” and its various state divisions comprise
the nation’s biggest farm lobby, and together they
spend millions influencing Congress and promoting
policies that benefit agribusiness, sometimes at the
expense of family farmers. The Farm Bureau does
not want legal aid lawyers to sue on behalf of farm
workers who have been cheated out of their wages
or mistreated.
Christian Coalition: A longtime foe of LSC, it
recently has backed down from its opposition to
the program — partly because the Christian
Coalition has plenty of its own problems, such as
declining money and membership, to worry about,
and also because of increasing recognition that
many religious organizations support civil legal aid
for the poor.
Conservative Caucus: Founder and ex-Nixon
Administration official Howard Phillips has
espoused the abolition of federally funded legal aid
since LSC’s inception. Phillips left the GOP because
it was too moderate for his tastes, and he later
formed a far-Right party that seeks to impose a
religion-based government on the United States.
Family Research Council: Led by former Reagan
Administration official and unsuccessful
Presidential candidate Gary Bauer, the Family
Research Council is continuing the fight that the
Christian Coalition abandoned. If the Family
Research Council had its way, low-income women
would be denied the opportunity to obtain divorces
with the assistance of legal aid lawyers.
National Legal and Policy Center: Founder and
former LSC official Kenneth Boehm was fired by LSC
because he did not support the existence of the
program he was being paid to represent. The
National Legal and Policy Center issues Horror
Stories about LSC-funded programs that often are
thinly-veiled attacks on low-income people.
In many cases, the outraged and
righteous rhetoric of the attackers
obscures an agenda that many
Americans would find troubling or
even deeply unsettling.
4
THE ACCESS
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
THE FARM BUREAU
Attacks on legal aid lawyers seem particularly
misplaced when directed at those performing the
difficult work of protecting vulnerable migrant workers
from unscrupulous employers who pay illegally low
wages and maintain dangerous workplaces. The
workers’ needs are often compelling at a fundamental
human level. In Maryland, for example, a Hispanic
immigrant stablehand’s employers unlawfully withheld
more than a year’s worth of his wages, leaving him
unable to provide food for his two children and
pregnant wife. In California, a flower grower held
dozens of Mexican immigrant laborers in virtual slavery
on his property. In both of these cases, LSC-funded
lawyers came to the rescue, helping the workers by
suing to correct dangerous working conditions and to
obtain back wages. In the case of the flower grower, the
lawyers also obtained both $1.5 million in damages for
the laborers and the grower’s conviction on
racketeering, labor and immigration law charges.
Of course, enforcing workers’ rights can cut into the
profits of those employers who count on making
money by breaking the law. And over the years,
enforcement efforts by legal aid lawyers have not
pleased big agribusiness which, in the form of the Farm
Bureau, the nation’s biggest farm lobby, has been one of
the most intense opponents of LSC.
Founded in 1919 as a conservative alternative to
progressive farming movements such as the Grange,
and long an important source of insurance and social
contact for farmers across the country, the Farm Bureau
has built itself into a formidable force on Capitol Hill.
In 1998, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics, the Farm Bureau spent $4.6 million and
employed 17 registered lobbyists on its staff to try to
influence Congress. The Farm Bureau is also a potent
force in state politics, with 2,800 county chapters.
For several decades, LSC — or rather its elimination
— has been one of the Farm Bureau’s hot-button
issues. In the 1960s, lobbyists from the California Farm
Bureau, a Farm Bureau member, urged then-California
Governor Ronald Reagan to put a stop to California
Rural Legal Assistance, whose LSC-funded lawyers
were representing farm laborers. In 1978, the Farm
Bureau passed a resolution demanding that the federal
government abolish LSC and replace it with a system
under which low-income people would receive
vouchers that they could use to pay private lawyers. In
practice, that might have made it difficult for a farm
worker to find any lawyer without a conflict of interest
and with the expertise and willingness to take on big,
powerful, local agribusiness.
In the early 1980s, the Farm Bureau joined forces with
the Conservative Caucus, the Moral Majority, and other
groups in a campaign to eliminate LSC. A key complaint
was that legal aid lawyers educate farm employees about
their rights and help them take group action to enforce
those rights. In a 1980 letter to the Chairman of the
House Judiciary Committee, for example, the Farm
Bureau argued that LSC should be completely defunded,
citing reports that “Legal Services attorneys . . . are
A key [Farm Bureau] complaint was that legal aid lawyers educate farm employees
about their rights and help them take group action to enforce those rights.
5
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
soliciting business and stirring up controversy
particularly among migrant and seasonal farm workers.”
Of course, because LSC-funded lawyers assist clients
with many categories of cases, eliminating LSC would
do far more than insulate Farm Bureau members from
lawsuits by exploited farm workers. For example, it
would rob low-income tenants of the means to ensure
that their landlords provide safe living conditions, it
would leave elderly people without recourse against
unscrupulous businesses that prey on them, and it
would leave many victims of domestic violence without
recourse against their attackers. But in its zeal to guard
its members from the requirements of the labor laws,
the Farm Bureau did not hesitate to endorse this
drastic measure.
Farmworkers often need legal
representation in connection with:
• “[V]iolations of recruitment promises and
disputes over wages, working conditions, wrongful
terminations, and the job contract”
• “[M]isrepresentations in recruitment that are
actionable under the Migrant and Seasonal
Agricultural Worker Protection Act”
• “Legal claims involving transportation
reimbursement, unpaid wages, . . .
blacklisting and retaliation”
• “[J]ob injuries, and other health and
safety issues . . . [including] improper use
of pesticides”
• Inadequacy of employer-provided housing
• “[P]roblems obtaining workers compensation
benefits”
• Violations of employers’ obligations to offer
contract workers work or wages for at least
3/4 of the contract period
• “[F]ailure to pay end-of-season bonuses”
6
(Source: LSC, Erlenborn Commission Report, 1999)
THE ACCESS
TO
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
When efforts to abolish LSC stalled in the mid-80s,
the Farm Bureau shifted tactics. In 1989, working as
part of a group called the Legal Services Reform
Coalition, the Farm Bureau backed a proposal by Rep.
Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, and Rep. Bill McCollum,
R-Florida, to prevent LSC-funded lawyers from
assisting certain clients and taking certain types of
cases. Among the proposed restrictions were several
that would have made it much more difficult for
migrant workers using federally funded legal aid
lawyers to assert their rights. One would have required
migrant farmworkers represented by a federally
funded legal aid lawyer to jump through a timeconsuming series of administrative hoops, and to go to
mediation, before asserting employment rights in court.
The restrictions also would have barred legal aid
lawyers from ever going to migrant camps without a
“documented request” for help. This would have
made it difficult for the lawyers to educate potential
clients about their legal rights, and even to tell the
clients about the lawyers available to represent them at
no cost.
Another proposed restriction–prohibiting LSCfunded lawyers from collecting attorneys’ fees awards
from private adversaries–was less obviously targeted at
farmworker representation. It stemmed from Farm
Bureau complaints about cases in which legal aid
lawyers successfully obtained court-ordered fees awards
from farmers who violated the law. Courts customarily
order attorneys’ fees awards in such cases to deter
wrongdoers from breaking the law. And fees awards
also have the virtue of shifting the cost of law
enforcement from the taxpayers, whose taxes finance
LSC, to the wrongdoers themselves. The Farm Bureau
often complains that taxpayer dollars should not fund
LSC, but it apparently also believes that the
wrongdoers whose harmful acts necessitate legal aid
lawsuits should not fund it either.
Although the Farm Bureau lobbied long and hard to
impose the Stenholm-McCollum restrictions on LSC,
the restrictions were defeated shortly after they were
proposed — in part, because a U.S. General Accounting
Office investigation failed to substantiate the Farm
Bureau’s accusations that LSC-funded lawyers had
committed any abuses in representing farm workers.
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
The Farm Bureau often complains that
taxpayer dollars should not fund LSC,
but it apparently also believes that the
wrongdoers whose harmful acts
necessitate legal aid lawsuits should
not fund it either.
At the same time, the Farm Bureau demanded a say
in the composition of LSC’s board. In 1989, the Farm
Bureau, along with other LSC opponents, pressured the
White House into killing the board appointment of
former Rep. M. Caldwell Butler, R-Virginia, whose
commitment to restricting the work of LSC-funded
lawyers they doubted. In 1990, the Farm Bureau also
took steps to force LSC Board Vice-Chairman John
Erlenborn, another former Republican member of
Congress, this time from Illinois, off the LSC Board.
Erlenborn had declined to endorse certain legislation
that would have restricted LSC’s representation of
migrant workers, explaining that because his Chicagobased law firm represented agricultural clients, he
would need to remain neutral on the issue to avoid a
conflict of interest. But the Farm Bureau refused to take
“no” for answer. As Erlenborn later recounted in a
newspaper interview, “The Farm Bureau went to clients
of this law firm and approached them saying, ‘The law
firm to whom you give a lot business has as a partner,
John Erlenborn, who is not helping us.’ The obvious
implication being: take your business away from the
law firm.” Faced with causing his firm to lose business,
Erlenborn resigned from the LSC Board in 1991. (In
1995, President Clinton reappointed him to the Board,
where he again serves as vice-chairman.)
The Farm Bureau continued to oppose LSC during
Congressional hearings in the early 1990s, but to no
avail. However, after the GOP takeover of Congress in
1994, the Farm Bureau again pushed to eliminate LSC.
The plan called for replacing LSC with a program of
block grants to state governments, which would
supposedly then set up their own systems for providing
legal aid to the poor. Rep. George Gekas, R-Pennsylvania,
introduced a bill to prohibit lawyers funded through the
block grants from using any federal funds in cases
THE ACCESS
TO
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
involving housing and employment discrimination,
consumer fraud and defective products, utility shutoffs,
patients’ rights, adoptions, welfare benefits, and
constitutional challenges to any statute. “We urge you to
oppose any effort to add to the bill provisions allowing
causes [of action] related to employment law,
constitutional challenges, and consumer fraud,” thenFarm Bureau President Dean Kleckner wrote in a letter to
a member of Congress in 1995.
Although the block-granting proposal was eventually
defeated, the Farm Bureau was partially successful in
1996, when Congress slashed funding for LSC and
imposed restrictions on many of the activities that the
Farm Bureau had complained of, including
representing undocumented workers and collecting
attorneys’ fees awards from unsuccessful opponents.
Former American Farm Bureau Federation President Dean Kleckner (AP/Wide World
Photos, reprinted with permission)
Many of these restrictions have had surprising effects.
The undocumented worker restriction, for example,
has ended up hurting documented workers. As Gregory
Schell, managing attorney of Florida Legal Services’
Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, explains, when
LSC-funded providers are prevented from representing
undocumented workers, “employers’ perverse response
is to make sure that they do not hire any documented
workers” so that their employees cannot use legal aid
lawyers to enforce their rights.
JUSTICE SERIES
7
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
8
Additionally, many of the new restrictions harmed
individuals other than farmworkers. For example,
the restrictions prevented undocumented battered
women from obtaining LSC-funded legal help in
actions against their abusers. After one woman died
when she was unable to obtain emergency assistance
from a legal aid office, Congress immediately passed an
amendment permitting legal aid lawyers to undertake
the narrow category of cases on behalf of
undocumented battered women.
The rest of the restrictions remain in place, but the
Farm Bureau has given no sign that it is satisfied. In a
1997 position paper, for example, the Farm Bureau
continued to take the position that LSC should be
eliminated altogether and replaced by block grants to
the states that each state could use as it sees fit.
In these battles, much of the Farm Bureau’s political
clout has come from its oft-repeated claim that it
provides the voice for almost five million farm families
“joining together to solve common problems.” The
majority of Farm Bureau members, however, are not
family farmers. Rather they are the policyholders of
more than fifty Farm Bureau-affiliated insurance
companies with no particular ties to agriculture or
farming. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
estimates that only about one million Americans are
actually full-time farmers.
The Farm Bureau’s bloated farm family membership
claim masks both its strong financial ties to
agribusiness and its promotion of a political agenda
which favors industrialized agriculture over the
pressing needs of family farmers. The Farm Bureau’s
empire of insurance, mutual fund and banking
companies is heavily invested in giant agricultural
corporations, as well as in the tobacco, oil, automobile,
chemical and pesticide industries. These investments
generate billions of dollars in annual revenues for the
federal, state and county farm bureaus.
One example of farm bureau links to agribusiness is
through FBL Financial Group. Originally started by the
Iowa Farm Bureau to provide insurance to its members,
it has now grown into a $3.5 billion corporation. It not
only sells insurance through Farm Bureau chapters in
fourteen states but also invests in agribusinesses such
as ConAgra, a Nebraska food company that markets
over 70 food brands, including Blue Bonnet, Orville
Redenbacher’s and Swiss Miss. In 1998, ConAgra had
over $23.8 billion in sales. FBL’s investment in
THE ACCESS
TO
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
Non-citizen farmworkers have a
particularly difficult time
obtaining legal representation
from non-legal aid lawyers:
• “The migratory and isolated nature of alien
farmworker populations makes them extremely
difficult for private attorneys to represent. . . .
[C]lients generally cannot be accessed by phone
or fax, clients may not be able to communicate in
writing, and interviewing a client or obtaining or
preparing documents may require multiple visits
in person to the worker’s location.”
• “Spanish speaking attorneys are rare, and for
attorneys who do not speak Spanish, representing
farmworker clients is unfeasible. . . . Many states
in the southeastern United States where
farmworkers are common lack a significant
Spanish-speaking bar.”
• “Fees on wage and hour cases, farm labor safety
cases, and many workers compensation cases are
too low relative to the time needed to resolve the
case for most private attorneys to litigate.”
• “Alien farmworker representation is . . .
compromised by the lack of private attorneys in
rural areas. Georgia, for example, has several
rural agricultural counties with fewer than five
practicing lawyers, and at least one such county
with no attorney at all.”
• “Private attorneys who engage in the most pro
bono work are located in large firms in major
cities . . . . The few attorneys who do reside in
locations where farmworkers are likely to live and
work generally represent agricultural employers
and are conflicted out of representing
farmworkers.”
• “[T]he availability of legal assistance from
non-LSC funded, non-profit organizations is
limited. . . . Many important agricultural states,
such as Arkansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, and
Texas have no such entities. . . .”
(Source: LSC, Erlenborn Commission Report, 1999)
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
ConAgra not only benefits the Iowa Farm Bureau, but
it also directly benefits farm bureau leaders across the
country. Members of FBL’s Board of Directors, among
them the heads of the state farm bureaus in Iowa,
North Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma, each receive
approximately 1% of FBL’s stock. This translates into
hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock options for
farm bureau leaders, which become more valuable
when FBL’s agribusiness holdings do well.
These financial ties may explain why the Farm
Bureau lobbies aggressively for public policies which
favor agribusiness at the expense of small farmers. One
case in point is the Farm Bureau’s strenuous opposition
to national legislation that would put a moratorium on
the agribusiness mergers that are squeezing out family
farms. Another example is the accusation made by
farmers in Iowa that the Iowa Farm Bureau recently
spent more time lobbying the Iowa legislature to bail
out a bankrupt airline in which it was invested than
pushing for much-needed low-interest loans to
struggling farmers.
The concerns of many American farmers are
articulated by Ron Thorson, a Farm Bureau critic who
comes from a farm family and hosts a radio show in
rural Illinois. Thorson told a 60 Minutes interviewer in
2000 that Farm Bureau lobbyists are “sure happy to
come to the aid of agribusiness when they need
something. But when the American farmer needs some
relief, where are they?” Perhaps it is not surprising
then, in light of the Farm Bureau’s activities, that
shortly after the 60 Minutes piece aired a coalition of
over 180 farm and environmental groups called for a
congressional investigation into the Farm Bureau’s
financial dealings and special tax status.
The Farm Bureau’s opposition to LSC is unfortunately
another glaring example of a policy that serves the
interests of agribusiness, not those of small farmers.
Enforcement of workers’ rights does not have much
impact on most small farmers, who generally rely on
family labor, not paid labor. But destroying LSC would
have a large and adverse impact on small farmers, who
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
often need legal aid lawyers to help with farm-specific
problems such as negotiating with entities that buy farm
products, negotiating with creditors, understanding and
complying with environmental laws, obtaining
insurance proceeds when crops are destroyed by
droughts or other natural disasters, engaging in real
estate transactions, and fighting foreclosures. And of
course small farmers also rely on legal assistance for the
whole range of family law, consumer and other issues
shared by non-farmers. It can be particularly difficult
for small farmers to get help from non-legal aid lawyers
for any legal problems that involve highly specialized
areas of the law, especially since local lawyers often
represent the farmers’ creditors and are consequently
conflicted out of representing the farmers.
Farmers, who are two times as likely as the rest of
the population to be poor, can often qualify for
assistance from legal aid offices. Legal aid offices that
have stepped up to address farmers’ needs include the
LSC-funded Appalachian Research and Defense Fund
in Kentucky, which has helped farmers enter into
bankruptcy and restructure loans from the federal
Farmers Home Administration. In Virginia, the LSCfunded Virginia Legal Aid Society has helped several
farmers forestall bank attempts to foreclose on their
farms. In Michigan, the Southwest Michigan Migrant
Legal Council has held seminars for farmers on how
legal aid can help them.
This assistance is part of a long tradition of legal aid
offices helping family farmers. In the early 1980s, LSC
conducted a Congressionally mandated study regarding
the needs of the rural poor. As a result of the study, LSC
gave a grant in 1981 to the Center for Rural Affairs to
produce the Farm Loan Handbook, which has served as an
invaluable resource for family farmers. In 1986, the LSCfunded Legal Services Corporation of Iowa established its
Farm Project, which has represented family farmers in
dealings with government and private creditors.
The Farm Bureau’s key role in pushing through the
1996 funding cuts and restrictions on LSC has
ultimately hurt small farmers, who, like other legal aid
The Farm Bureau’s opposition to LSC is unfortunately another glaring example of
a policy that serves the interests of agribusiness, not those of small farmers.
Destroying LSC would have a large and adverse impact on small farmers, who
often need legal aid lawyers to help with farm-specific problems.
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
9
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
clients, are finding it harder than ever to get a lawyer to
assist them. One person all too familiar with the
consequences of the cuts and restrictions is Stephen
Carpenter, a lawyer at the Farmer’s Legal Action Group
in St. Paul, Minnesota, a small non-LSC-funded group
that provides legal assistance to farmers and expert
advice to lawyers who represent farmers. He says that
extreme geographic isolation makes it difficult for
many farmers to learn about the legal aid lawyers who
possess the knowledge and willingness to help them,
and even to learn enough to know when a lawyer
The Farm Bureau’s key role in pushing
through the 1996 cuts and funding
restrictions on LSC has ultimately hurt
small farmers, who, like other legal aid
clients, are finding it harder than ever
to get a lawyer to assist them.
might be able to help them. If lawyers in LSC-funded
programs could reach out to explain to these farmers
their legal rights in dealing with entities that buy their
products, and in dealing with creditors, the farmers
could make better informed decisions about when and
how to protect their rights. But, unfortunately, the
1996 outreach restriction makes it difficult for LSCfunded lawyers to provide this important service.
Often, Carpenter says, the only people filling the void
are non-lawyers with what are at best extremely
unorthodox views of the law and at worst dangerously
incorrect advice. One result, according to Carpenter, is
that in farming communities “there’s a level of
desperation that’s going unaddressed.”
Recently, the Farm Bureau and its local divisions
have locked their sights on a new legal aid target. Two
important sources of funding that supplement federal
appropriations for LSC are state-based: state
governmental appropriations and special Interest on
Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) funds set up by bar
associations to pool interest collected on client funds
ON
held by lawyers for short periods of time. Funding
sources like these have been particularly important in
enabling legal aid providers to continue serving clients
who LSC-funded lawyers can no longer represent and
who desperately need representation.
Despite popular support for funding legal services in
this way, influential organizations that want to secure
immunity for the misdeeds of their members have
sought to control such funds. In Virginia, for example,
the Virginia Farm Bureau convinced several state
legislators to introduce a bill in January 2000 that
would have imposed on state appropriations and
IOLTA funds a set of restrictions modeled on the 1996
LSC funding restrictions. According to Alex Gulotta,
executive director of the Charlottesville-Albermarle
Legal Aid Society, these attacks came as a direct
response to the success of his office’s migrant worker
project, the Virginia Justice Center, in obtaining
$350,000 in back pay for migrant workers exploited by
their employers.
After strenuous opposition from legal services
lawyers and community groups, the sponsor of the bill
delayed its consideration, saying, “I wanted to make
sure that we’re not making a broader sweep than we
meant to.” He has since indicated that in all likelihood
he will withdraw his proposed legislation. However,
even if this particular bill ultimately goes nowhere,
lawyers in Virginia fear that the Virginia Farm Bureau
will continue to try to find ways to interfere with
effective legal representation for migrant workers. And,
with a new appreciation for the fact that state funding
can be vulnerable to shifting political winds, the
Virginia Justice Center is redoubling its efforts to
identify private donors to support its crucial work.
Today, the Farm Bureau and its local divisions have
the same choice they have always had: expend more
energy fighting funding for civil legal aid nationally and
in the states, or spend that energy helping their
members to operate their businesses in a law-abiding
manner, thereby avoiding conflict with legal services
lawyers. Either method will ultimately save their
agribusiness members money, but only one method
will also fulfill the members’ obligation to obey the
laws by which the rest of us live.
10
THE ACCESS
TO
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
THE NATIONAL LEGAL
AND POLICY CENTER
Keeping company with the Farm Bureau, another
ardent LSC attacker is the National Legal and Policy
Center (NLPC), which is based in Virginia. NLPC’s
Legal Services Accountability Project, which was first
announced in 1995, advertises that it is “committed to
researching and exposing abuses within the [federal]
Legal Services program.” NLPC Chairman Kenneth
Boehm casts himself in the role of credible critic based
on his work as an LSC official from 1989 to 1994,
including as counsel to LSC’s Board of Directors.
Boehm has said that his experience working for LSC
left him disillusioned with the organization, but he
was opposed to the program even before he worked
for it. And there is some indication that what Boehm
calls disillusionment may in fact be simply a thinlyveiled personal vendetta. Boehm admits that he was
fired from the organization he now devotes his life to
attacking. Former LSC President Alex Forger, who
terminated Boehm not long after taking control of
LSC in 1994, explains: “We thought it was
inappropriate to have somebody there in his position
at LSC who didn’t even support the existence of the
program. He was particularly bitter, and joined the
enemy camp as soon as he could.”
Boehm found a patron for his crusade in
multimillionaire newspaper publisher Richard Scaife,
who has given away over $600 million to numerous
right-wing groups. Boehm is in interesting company.
Scaife was a primary contributor to the $2.4 million
Arkansas Project, the American Spectator’s four-year
attempt to dig up dirt on President Clinton, and he
also subsidized writer Christopher Ruddy’s vain
attempts to convince America that Clinton aide Vincent
Foster’s death in 1993 was not a suicide. In 1997 and
1998, two Scaife organizations — the Sarah Scaife
Foundation and the Carthage Foundation —
contributed a total of $185,000 to NLPC. Another
supporter of NLPC is the John M. Olin Foundation,
which contributed $70,000 to NLPC’s Legal Services
Accountability Project in 1997.
Boehm is a vigorous anti-LSC spokesman who, by
his own account, has given interviews to “more than
300 radio and TV programs” and has testified at more
than a half-dozen congressional hearings on LSC. And
Former LSC President Alex Forger, who terminated Boehm not long after taking
control of LSC in 1994, explains: “We thought it was inappropriate to have
somebody there in his position at LSC who didn’t even support the existence
of the program. He was particularly bitter, and joined the enemy camp as soon
as he could.”
11
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
Boehm does not hesitate to play hardball. For example,
certainly did not help the Congressman in a tight
when Rep. Jon Fox, R-Pennsylvania, successfully
election race that fall, which he lost.
introduced a budget amendment to boost LSC’s
This NLPC tactic — attacking politicians who do not
funding during the final Congressional appropriations
toe the NLPC line on LSC — has recently been copied
votes in 1996 and 1997, NLPC filed a complaint
by the Club for Growth, an organization that emerged
against Fox with the Federal
in December 1999 with a
Election Commission,
plan to spend $10 million
charging that a $25,000
to influence Congressional
personal loan he had
races in 2000, including
received five years before
those identified as involving
was an illegal campaign
Republican incumbents who
contribution. NLPC filed a
voted to support LSC.
second complaint against
Another NLPC tactic is to
Fox in January 1998 for
do what is traditionally
another $10,000 personal
called “the political smear.”
loan from the same period,
The five people on NLPC’s
and it subsequently
staff churn out broadsides,
demanded an investigation
dubbed Legal Services Horror
by the House Ethics
Stories, which bear a visual
Committee as well.
parody of Edvard Munch’s
Although NLPC claimed
painting “The Scream” and
its targeting of Fox was not
provide fodder for floor
intended to punish him
speeches by congressional
for his support of legal aid,
opponents of LSC. Each
this was not the first time
Horror Stories issue
that Boehm had filed a
describes particular cases
complaint with a
handled by LSC-funded
government agency against
lawyers, exaggerating the
a political opponent. In
facts or implications of
1985, when he headed a
those cases for political gain.
Richard Scaife (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, reprinted with permission)
group called Citizens for
Many Horror Stories reflect
Reagan, Boehm filed Internal
the presumption that
Revenue Service complaints against religious groups
federally funded legal aid lawyers should represent
such as the United States Presbyterian Church, the
only those clients NLPC considers sufficiently worthy.
Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, and the Sisters of
This is a sharp departure from this nation’s traditional
Loretto, alleging that they had violated their taxperspective on legal reprsentation. Even in the criminal
exempt status by protesting the Reagan
justice setting, all low-income people accused of crimes
Administration’s covert war in Central America.
are guaranteed a lawyer, and society expects the judge
Ultimately, neither the Federal Elections Commission
will exercise an independent role in determining who
nor the House Ethics Committee chose to pursue the
is guilty and who is not. In contrast, NLPC Horror
NLPC’s complaints against Fox. However, the attacks
Stories routinely suggest that legal aid lawyers should
12
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
C
N
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
A sampling of inflammatory rhetoric from critics of legal service offices:
Howard Phillips, chairman and founder of The Conservative Caucus:
Legal aid lawyers “transfer wealth from productive, law-abiding citizens to persons who reject work as their
duty and regard welfare as their right.”
(Source: Boston Globe, October 11, 1995)
Kenneth Boehm and Peter T. Flaherty, respectively chairman and president of the National
Legal and Policy Center:
“Serving the needs of individual poor people is not the primary objective of most legal-services lawyers.
Rather, Legal Services grantees seek to ‘rescue’ the poor as a class through litigated increases in transfer
payments and government subsidies . . . . This isn’t the kind of legal help that poor people need most, and
poor people would be better off if Legal Services were abolished.”
(Source: Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1995)
Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council:
LSC is a “pot of gold for the far left” with a clear agenda: “Break up the family and replace Dad with a
welfare check.”
(Source: Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1995)
Former Representative Robert K. Dornan:
LSC is “one of the most reckless and irresponsible agencies to have ever been created by the federal
government . . . . [B]y abusing government funds, thereby depriving the poor of the money that is supposed
to be spent on their legal representation, LSC grantees have demonstrated that they are primarily concerned
with their own personal gain and the monopoly they have on LSC grant money. . . . All too often the LSC
functions like a queen bee who sends out little liberal worker bees everywhere to drive the radical, left-wing
agenda in this country.”
(Source: Congressional Testimony, March 29, 1996)
Congressman Dan Burton:
“Funding for this abusive, arrogant program must be terminated.”
(Source: Congressional Hearing, April 24, 1997)
13
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
decide — based on morality, not on the legal merits of
an individual’s case — who may receive representation
and who may not. In NLPC’s world, legal aid lawyers
would act as lawyer, judge and jury, all in one.
For example, several Horror Stories fault legal aid
lawyers for representing clients who are gay or lesbian.
In a 1997 story titled “Legal Services Anti-Family
Agenda,” NLPC criticizes LSC-funded Brooklyn Legal
Services for representing a lesbian at a hearing in which
she sought to adopt her longtime partner’s infant
daughter, who had been conceived by artificial
insemination. In another anecdote, from 1995, NLPC
objects to a successful 1989 New York state court
argument advanced by then-LSC-funded Legal Aid
Society of New York City and other LSC-funded
entities that Miguel Braschi should be permitted to
remain a tenant in the rent-controlled apartment that
he had lived in for years with his male life partner,
Leslie Blanchard, even though only Blanchard’s name
was on the lease. Braschi and Blanchard had lived
together until Blanchard’s death from AIDS. New York’s
highest court ultimately agreed with Legal Aid that
because the law allowed family members to stay in
apartments that they had lived in with a leaseholder,
Braschi should be allowed to stay in the apartment.
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
Another premise behind the Horror Stories is that
legal aid lawyers should refrain from enforcing certain
rights that NLPC views as objectionable. Just as the
Farm Bureau uses its attacks on legal aid lawyers to try
to prevent enforcement of worker protection statutes,
NLPC criticizes legal aid lawyers for using federal
funding to enforce a wide variety of statutory and
constitutional rights of which it disapproves. For
example, NLPC’s Horror Stories criticize legal aid
lawyers for attempting to help clients obtain
government benefits, including federal black lung
disability benefits for miners and their families, public
assistance benefits, federal Supplemental Security
Income benefits for people too disabled to work, and
unemployment benefits.
These criticisms of legal aid lawyers for not passing
judgment on the morality of potential clients and
for enforcing federal and state statutes provide an
odd contrast to another NLPC criticism of legal aid
lawyers — that they “promot[e] a left-wing political
agenda.” As it turns out, NLPC objects to legal aid
lawyers not because they are extraordinarily political,
but because they do not share NLPC’s own
extraordinary politics.
Just as the Farm Bureau uses its attacks on legal aid lawyers to try to prevent
enforcement of worker protection statutes, NLPC criticizes legal aid lawyers for
using federal funding to enforce a wide variety of statutory and constitutional
rights of which it disapproves.
14
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
Religious groups such as Catholic Charities USA,
the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
which provide help to low-income people, are longtime
Corporation for Public Broadcasting) was a key item on
LSC supporters. Nevertheless, LSC was a target for the
the wish list.
ire of the politically influential Religious Right
Reed explained to his audience, “One of the main
movement of the 1980s and 1990s
reasons why we call for the
and continues to suffer attacks from
privatization of the Legal Services
this quarter. The Rev. Jerry Falwell’s
Corporation is because they are
Moral Majority, now defunct, was
taking roughly $500 million a year
an early LSC opponent. In 1987, in
in taxpayer funds and using it to
the course of seeking the
litigate on behalf of 210,000
Republican Presidential
divorces every year with our tax
nomination, television evangelist
dollars . . . . We know that women
and entrepreneur the Rev. Pat
within the first two years after a
Robertson condemned LSC as a
divorce suffer a 70% loss in their
“leftist” organization and pledged
income. We don’t believe the
that, if elected, he would bring the
Federal Government should be in
government to a halt before he
the business of encouraging
would approve “one penny” for
marriages to break-up and for
LSC. In 1988, in much the same
families to shatter [sic].”
vein, James Dobson, president of
Reed’s attack on divorce created
Former Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed
(Photo by Keith Jenkins, (c) 1996 The Washington Post,
Focus on the Family, and Adrian
an awkward moment for some of
reprinted with permission)
Rodgers, then president of the
the Congressional supporters who
Southern Baptist Convention, wrote a joint letter to
had joined him at the press conference in support of
President Reagan asking him to veto the appropriations
the “Contract with the American Family.” Because
bill containing legal aid funding.
Christian Coalition Congressional allies included thenThe Christian Coalition, a byproduct of Robertson’s
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia; Rep. John
unsuccessful presidential effort, emerged as one of the
Kasich, R-Ohio; and Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, all of
key antagonists of LSC in the mid-1990s. In May 1995,
whom had been divorced, critics suggested that they
Ralph Reed, then executive director of the Christian
believed only powerful Congressmen, not their
Coalition, held a press conference unveiling the
indigent constituents, should be able to get divorced.
“Contract with the American Family,” his organization’s
Beyond that, Reed’s statement grossly misrepresented
10-point blueprint for reshaping American government
the role played by legal aid organizations. Many clients
and society. Abolishing federal funding for LSC (along
seeking divorces are victims of domestic violence, who
with funding for the National Endowment for the Arts,
seek refuge in battered women’s shelters, which in turn
15
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
LSC’s opponents frequently claim that LSC-funded lawyers pursue a
left-wing ideological agenda, instead of helping low-income clients.
But legal aid lawyers often serve as a check and balance against the
power of big government institutions over individuals, a function
dear to the hearts of many conservatives. For example:
School choice: Parents from the working class Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn were discontented with
low reading scores, inadequate services and overcrowding in the local public schools. When their complaints
were not remedied, they decided to organize their own community school. A lawyer from LSC-funded
Williamsburg Legal Services provided legal advice to the parents on matters such as obtaining approval from
local school board officials and applying for a private foundation grant.
(Source: New York Daily News, April 19, 1998)
The right to own a firearm: In 1990, the Richmond, Virginia Regional Redevelopment Housing Administration
drew up a new standard lease for public housing tenants prohibiting them from owning firearms. A tenants’
organization objected, saying that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution applied to them
just as it did to everyone else. LSC-funded Central Virginia Legal Aid Society took the tenants’ case to federal
court and called an official from the National Rifle Association to testify as a witness on the tenants’ behalf.
The judge declined to overturn the ban. Subsequently, Virginia legislators passed a bill guaranteeing the public
housing tenants’ right to own guns, but it was vetoed by the governor.
(Source: Washington Post, January 31, 1991; UPI, April 3, 1991)
Parental Rights: In Mississippi, a divorced mother’s parental rights were terminated by a local judge, who ruled
that the mother had not been sending required child-support payments to her ex-husband and had failed to
visit the children regularly. The mother denied the accusations, saying that she had indeed been paying support
and that she wanted to visit the children but the local sheriff was unwilling to compel her ex-husband to honor
the visitation order. Nevertheless, the state supreme court would not hear her appeal because the mother, a
waitress, could not afford the $2,352 cost of a court transcript. A legal aid lawyer took her case, and he
continued to represent her on a pro bono basis even after he was forced to leave legal aid because of funding
cutbacks. In December 1996, the United States Supreme Court ruled that courts cannot strip parents of their
visitation rights simply because the parents cannot afford an appeal.
(Source: Washington Times, December 17, 1996)
16
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
refer them to LSC-funded legal aid offices for assistance
in escaping abusive spouses. “A lot of our clients don’t
have much money,” explains Theresa Clemens, director
of A Better Way, a battered women’s shelter in
Anderson, Indiana. “So if they hear they can get a free
divorce . . . well, that’s a major uplifting thing for them.
It gives them the courage to finally go through with
something they’ve been trying to do for quite a while.”
When confronted on this point in 1995 by a
Washington Post interviewer, Reed backtracked a bit.
“We would obviously not be in favor of a woman
remaining in an abusive or violent marriage,” he
admitted. “What we are complaining about is the
systematic subsidy for the break-up of families in the
inner cities.”
Despite these obvious contradictions, the highly
sophisticated and well-financed Christian Coalition
continued to press members of Congress to eliminate
LSC. In 1997 — a year in which the Christian
Coalition spent $7.9 million on lobbying — and on the
eve of a House subcommittee hearing on LSC’s
appropriation, the Christian Coalition joined with
several dozen other conservative groups — including
NLPC and the Farm Business Coalition — in calling for
the program’s abolition. But in the face of this mass
lobbying effort, many supporters rallied to LSC’s
defense, and Congress decided not to kill the program.
In 1998, after LSC Chairman John McKay showed
the Christian Coalition that many churches strongly
supported LSC, the Christian Coalition finally stopped
calling for LSC’s elimination. Decreased contributions
and a quarrel with the IRS over tax-exempt status
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia
(Photo by Keith Jenkins, (c) 1996 The Washington Post, reprinted with permission)
that in 1999 forced it to split into two organizations
have further diminished the threat posed by the
Christian Coalition.
Despite continued strong church-based support for
LSC, other Religious Right groups continue their
attacks on LSC, though. The most prominent is the
Family Research Council (FRC), the Washington, D.C.
wing of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. The
affiliated Political Action Committee, called the
Campaign for Working Families, amassed a nearly $2
million war chest for campaign contributions during
the 1997-98 electoral cycle alone.
Since 1988, FRC has been headed by former
Reagan policy advisor Gary Bauer. He took a leave of
absence in 1999 to run for the Republican Presidential
In 1998, after LSC Chairman John McKay showed the Christian Coalition that
many churches strongly supported LSC, the Christian Coalition finally stopped
calling for LSC’s elimination.
17
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
Postcard that the American Family Association urged its members to
send to Congress in early 2000
Dear Congressman,
I was appalled to learn that Congress gives my tax dollars to the Legal Services
Corporation, only to have the LSC use them to break up an average of 200,000
marriages a year!
Not only that, the Legal Services Corporation, defends drug dealers, child
abusers, alcoholics and rapists! What’s going on?
Please stop giving my tax dollars to the LSC. When it come time to vote on
funding for the Legal Services Corporation, vote for NO FUNDING! Please do not
give my taxes to LSC until it does what it was created to do: namely to help poor
people who can’t afford to hire lawyers — not break up families.
Sincerely,
nomination, but he dropped out of the race in
February 2000 after receiving just one percent of
the vote in the New Hampshire primary. In the
mid-1990s, Bauer and FRC had joined in the
Christian Coalition’s efforts to destroy LSC. On the
same day that Reed unveiled the “Contract for the
American Family,” Bauer had issued a press release in
which he complained that “the liberal, activist legal
services lawyers in this program are militantly intent on
using taxpayer funds to obstruct, delay and defeat
many of the major objectives of this Congress. Nothing
short of a complete defunding will solve this problem.”
In 1998, FRC opposed the Senate’s confirmation of
Justice Margaret Morrow to the U.S. District Court for
the Central District of California, arguing that she
“fought to allow aggressive political litigation by the
18
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
publicly-funded Legal Services Corporation.” The FRC’s
objections were based on a 1983 article in which
Morrow opposed restrictions on LSC-funded lawyers.
If the rhetoric of LSC’s attackers has started to sound
familiar at this point in the article, there’s a good
reason. A number of different organizations take turns
bashing LSC, but they tend to share the same rhetoric
and even the same research. For example, in March
2000 the American Family Association, another
Religious Right organization, stated on its website that
LSC-funded offices had represented a child molester in
a child custody lawsuit and a convicted alien smuggler
in a deportation case, and had sought to overturn
federal welfare reform. When asked where its
information came from, an American Family
Association spokesman cited the National Legal and
Policy Center.
This reliance on research done by others means
that the information is often stale and inaccurate —
although one organization may stop using a particular
argument when it has been discredited, that does
not stop the others from using it. For example, as
recently as March 2000 the American Family
Association urged its members to send pre-printed
postcards to Congress that recycled the Christian
Coalition’s embarrassing contention that LSCfunded programs should not be helping low-income
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
Family Research Council President and sometime United States Presidential candidate Gary Bauer (Beth A. Keiser/AP/Wide World Photos, reprinted with permission)
women get divorced. “I was appalled to learn that
Congress gives my tax dollars to the Legal Services
Corporation,” the postcards read, “only to have the LSC
use them to break up an average of 200,000 marriages
a year!”
As recently as March 2000 the American Family Association urged its members to
send pre-printed postcards to Congress that recycled the Christian Coalition’s
embarrassing contention that LSC-funded programs should not be helping
low-income women get divorced.
19
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
HIDDEN AGENDAS: WHAT IS REALLY BEHIND ATTACKS
ON
LEGAL AID LAWYERS?
CONCLUSION
LSC’s foes are often motivated by overarching
agendas that go way beyond LSC’s elimination. Farm
employers seek to loosen farm labor laws, to ensure
that they do not get caught when they break the law,
and to avoid ever paying attorneys’ fees awards to fund
enforcement efforts when they are caught. NLPC
similarly wants to ensure that the statutes and
constitutional rights it disagrees with are not enforced.
The Religious Right wants to impose its elaborate
vision of morality on the rest of society.
But criticizing LSC-funded lawyers for enforcing the
laws is a little like blaming the police for arresting
shoplifters. As Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Connecticut,
points out, the real quarrel of LSC opponents — like
the Farm Bureau, NLPC and the Religious Right — is
with the content of our laws and not with the lawyers
who enforce those laws. He asks, “What I cannot
understand is why we blame [LSC-funded lawyers] for
seeking to enforce the laws we pass and the
Constitution of the United States we would die
defending. If we do not like the end result of the court
decisions, then maybe we have to look at the laws we
pass. What [LSC] attempts to do is make sure that all
citizens, the poorest, in fact, have the same right to
defend themselves in court.”
“What I cannot understand is why we blame [LSC-funded lawyers] for seeking
to enforce the laws we pass and the Constitution of the United States we would
die defending.”
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Connecticut
20
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
T
E
R
F
O
R
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
William J. Brennan, III
Chair
Smith, Stratton, Wise,
Heher & Brennan
E. Joshua Rosenkranz
President & CEO
Nancy Brennan
Executive Director,
Plimoth Plantation
David W. Carpenter
Sidley & Austin
Professor Peggy C. Davis
NYU School of Law
Professor John Ferejohn
NYU School of Law
Peter M. Fishbein
Kaye, Scholer, Fierman,
Hays & Handler
Professor Nancy Morawetz
NYU School of Law
Professor Burt Neuborne
Legal Director, Brennan Center;
NYU School of Law
Ronald L. Olson
Munger, Tolles & Olson
Dwight D. Opperman
Chairman, Key Investment, Inc.
Lawrence B. Pedowitz
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
Daniel A. Rezneck
General Counsel, District of
Columbia Financial
Responsibility & Management
Assistance Authority
John E. Sexton
Dean, NYU School of Law
Professor Thomas M. Jorde
University of California,
Berkeley School of Law
Walter J. Smith, S.J.
President & CEO,
The HealthCare Chaplaincy, Inc.
Edward J. Kelly, III
President & CEO,
Mercantile Bank
Shares Corporation
Professor Kim Taylor-Thompson
NYU School of Law
Professor Larry Kramer
NYU School of Law
Anthony Lewis
The New York Times
Professor Gerald P. Lopez
NYU School of Law
Anthony Lewis
The New York Times
Jeannemarie E. Smith
Treasurer
CFO, NYU School of Law
Steven Alan Reiss, Esq.
General Counsel
Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP
21
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES
B
R
E
N
N
A
N
C
E
N
THE ACCESS
T
E
TO
R
F
O
R
JUSTICE SERIES
J
U
S
T
I
C
E
THE ACCESS
TO
JUSTICE SERIES